No search was conducted on the subject matter of this specification in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or in any other search facility. I am unaware of any prior art more relevant to the subject matter of this specification than that which will be set forth hereinbelow.
Glass vision units for motor vehicles, such as side lites and back lites, have had ceramic paint applied thereto for both decorative and functional purposes. A decorative purpose would be, for example, that the model name of the vehicle be printed on a glass lite. For functional purposes, ceramic paint is printed on such glass lites for the purpose of rendering the lites opaque so that someone from the exterior of the vehicle could not view areas located beneath moldings or package trays or other types of retaining fixtures.
In the past, our Company manufactured such glass lites in the following manner. Individual glass templates, which would form the glass lite in question were cut from larger glass brackets. The individual glass templates were then carefully washed and stacked for a subsequent painting operation. At some substantial time after the washing of the glass template, the glass template was moved to a painting operation. In the painting operation, an oil-based ceramic paint was applied to a surface of the glass template. The glass template was then moved into some type of a heated chamber so that the oil vehicle of the ceramic paint would be evaporated and the ceramic paint would be at least temporarily bonded to the surface of the glass template. To install and operate the heating equipment, of course, required substantial expenditures of funds.
The glass template then had to be allowed to cool so that it once again could be handled. Additional operations would then be practiced on the glass template, for example, bending and tempering in order to form a finished side lite or back lite for a motor vehicle. During the bending and tempering operations, the cereamic paint would become fire bonded to the surface of the glass template and would not be removable therefrom under normal abrading action.
It is an object of this invention to provide a method of bonding an oil-based ceramic paint to a surface of a glass sheet which is cheaper and more economical than the prior known method. It is an additional object of this invention to provide a method of bonding an oil-based ceramic paint to a surface of a glass sheet which requires less sophisticated apparatus than heretofore required with the method described above, particularly in the step of heating the glass sheet in order to have the oil vehicle of the ceramic paint be evaporated and the ceramic paint bonded to the surface of the glass sheet.